Tuesday, January 19, 2010

Life Of Jungle


Representative democracy cannot live without characters. The theatre of big egos and sprawling talents keeps the audience's interest alive. People say it's only the issues that matter, but as soon as the theatre folds, the audience melts away. For that reason, Michael Heseltine has been one of the great servants of British democratic life since the Seventies, a vivid, preening carnivore who helped put the life into arguments that convulsed the country. From council house sales to CND, Toxteth to Margaret Thatcher, at some time or other Heseltine has provoked gurgles of private agreement and teeth-grindings of angry dissent in half the kitchens of the nation.

We know, or think we do, the main outlines of his story - the dyslexic schoolboy who made a fortune in low-rent hotels and magazines, became a Heathite Tory MP, a technocratic Minister, Margaret Thatcher's great enemy, the 'nearly man' who might have been Prime Minister or party leader on at least three occasions but who didn't, and has now retired to contemplate, rather than swing among, his fine collection of trees.

British political memoirs tend to follow a predictable pattern. The early life, with its interesting revelations of family eccentricity and tough, ambition-forging times, is followed by the Oxbridge years, when lifelong political friendships and contacts are formed. Then comes the breathless account of the first constituency campaign, the charmingly self-mocking account of that terrifying maiden speech, the gruff advice from Sir Old Salt MP - what a character! - then the tramp, tramp, tramp of departmental achievements. As he tramps, Our Hero absolves himself from any errors other memoirs attack him for, and energetically reheats ancient grudges.

Wives appear in a blur. Children provide a few paragraphs of amusing background colour. A couple of imperfectly remembered jokes are hastily inserted after the first read-through. And - hey presto! - it's time to call the chap at the Daily Mail who apparently pays such a lot to extract the microwaved grudges. Strangely, Our Hero has no examples of his own of petty spite, failure of vision or genuine remorse to record.

This autobiography follows the pattern but it is vastly better than most. Heseltine says he does not find writing (or reading) easy and he is not an exciting prose writer. But, presumably thanks to veteran journalist Anthony Howard, who has been a close friend since student days and helped with it, this is one of the most elegant, politically informative and, in the widest sense, literate reviews of a political life in many years. It is not up there with the great autobiographies of Healey or Jenkins, but it stands easy comparison with Thatcher, Major or Lawson.

Like many people, I always found Heseltine rather aloof, wary, even cold. He is certainly a private man. His frank account of the catastrophic effect of his father's early death is not followed by much later soul-baring. The general tone is of wry lack of self-pity, amusement at the pitfalls and treacheries of political life and disdain, rather than anger, for old enemies such as Airey Neave, Normans Tebbit, Lamont and Thatcher herself.

It is impressive rather than endearing. And indeed it is a curious tribute to the British class system that a Swansea boy who made his fortune in London bedsits and commercial magazines and who was much lampooned as a wideboy 'who has to buy his own furniture' should, in his sixties, have the aura of a very grand grandee indeed, the nearest Blair's Britain has to a Whig aristo.

So why is the book so good, lacking as it does the easy bile, the maudlin revelations or the gossip that mostly keeps us reading? Close students of the great dramas of Heseltine's career - his near-bankruptcy, the mace-waving, his Cabinet resignation, his leadership challenge, his involvement in the Ponting or Matrix Churchill cases, won't even find much new information on those, though the Westland story is one that still makes me seethe when I read it.

No, the cheering, old-fashioned answer is that Life in the Jungle is crammed with detail and serious explanation about many of the issues that have mattered most to Heseltine and Britain over the years. His struggle to respond practically to inner-city despair, above all in Liverpool; the complex, fascinating tale of how Margaret Thatcher abused her power to please her friends during Westland; the grappling with industrial change, council house sales, privatisations, transport schemes, wildlife protection and rough sleepers - those sorts of things are the meat of the book.

It's a book about doing, not being. From his early days as a businessman to his political apotheosis as President of the Board of Trade and Deputy Prime Minister, Heseltine has been a formidable doer, a hands-on administrator fascinated by the processes of power. He has put that gift to the service of a political identity which was once common among the Heathite Tories but is less so now - hawkish on defence, pro-European, tough-minded to the point of hardness when it comes to profits and the virtue of capitalism generally, yet genuinely gripped by the plight of the poor and courageously liberal on race at a time when it wasn't half so easy.

He also has a strong sense of history. He would never have tried to persuade Margaret Thatcher to make him 'Minister for Merseyside', it seems, had he not been gripped by awe and desolation at how the once great city port had collapsed from within. Perhaps less happily, he would not have embraced the Millennium Dome had he not dreamed of emulating the Great Exhibition and the Festival of Britain.

The most important missing ingredient, however, is a fully honest discussion of his own driving ambition. After Westland, he writes as if all the momentum that led him to challenge Thatcher came from outside, as if an eccentric army of newspaper editors, disaffected backbench MPs and humble commoners was urging the rebel general on, entirely to his own surprise. Yet he kept a detailed record of backbench Tory support hidden in his office and was prowling round Thatcher like the predator he also is. He describes it as 'my own battle for political survival', which is perhaps more eloquent than he intended.

Thatcher was one top beast and he was another, and they both knew it, and knew only one could survive. They stoked up their mutual loathing because at some level they had no choice. It's simple, David Attenborough stuff and it happens often in politics. This is the deeper, serious, policy Heseltine but the man we watched in the theatre, the human tiger, was real enough too. Admitting it would have made this book fully honest and raised it from being very good, which it certainly is, to a real classic.

Amazon Water Story
Rain is the lifeblood of all rainforests. It's the reason this lush, vibrant jungle can exist. Without it none of this exuberant plant life could grow and nothing else could live here either. But why does it rain in the rainforest? You might think it's just part of the weather system here... but it isn't. The forest itself makes rain as part of an ongoing water cycle.

Each tree can suck up hundreds of gallons of water every day, but will only use a small amount. The rest goes back into the atmosphere as water vapour released through tiny pores on the leaves.

Winds blow the vapour out across the canopy, collecting more and more moisture as they go. This saturated air is carried deep into the forest, where it falls again as rain. New trees suck up the rainwater and so the cycle continues... The forest acts as a kind of giant conveyor belt, a sort of huge Mexican wave of moisture travelling right across a continent.

Half of all rainwater that falls here in the Amazon is produced by the trees themselves. The scale of the system is simply staggering, this forest is so big it creates its own climate. Winds from the Atlantic ocean blow the water vapour westward, right across the Amazon basin, finally pushing it up against the mountainside.

A single droplet of water can take an incredible trip. It might be recycled through dozens of different trees and downpours, and travel more than 3,000 km before it reaches the mountains of the Andes. Eventually, rain falls and the whole water story begins again.

Forest versus River
Rainforest rivers are dangerously unpredictable, especially in flood. The cutting edge can swallow 25m of riverbank each year. The rivers form huge cliffs as whole slices of forest disappear. But the same force that cuts the cliffs on one side of the river has an opposite effect on the other. Here, instead of destroying the land, the river helps create it.

Jungle beaches are war zones - scene of a raging battle between the river and the forest. Tessauria plants are in the front line in the fight to claim back new territory. They're like paratroopers, invading as airborne seeds during the dry season when the river enemy is weakest. This is their chance to entrench their position.

Next, reinforcements arrive - massed ranks of cane like infantry which help to consolidate the position. Behind them are the heavy guns, cecropia trees. Each wave of plants creates the right conditions for the next to germinate and grow until, finally, the jungle wins the battle.

But nothing stays the same... the waterways constantly redesign the jungle tapestry, meandering in giant loops across the floodplain. Rather than leaving behind a trail of destruction, they create tranquil lakes. 'Oxbow' lakes are really stranded river bends, left behind when the main river cuts through the neck of an old loop.

And even these lakes won't last forever. Swamp palms often mark the old location of a dried up oxbow lake. Like all rainforest plants, the palms fight hard for a space to grow in and the shallow lake edges are a soft target for invasion. Slowly but surely new plants move in, turning the jungle into a swamp dominated by dense bands of palms. Once more, the forest is taking over.


* Shake any rainforest tree and up to 1500 different types of insect may fall out.
* More than 2000mm of rain falls in the rainforests every year.
* The bird-eating spiders of the Amazon rainforest can grow as big as a dinner plate.
* As little as 1% of sunlight reaches the forest floor.
* In a patch the size of a tennis court there may be as many as 60,000 seedlings waiting for their chance to stand in the sunshine.
* Jungle vines can grow to 200m long and can be as thick as your leg.
* 1.5 million people live in rainforests around the world.
* About a quarter of all medicines we take are made with plants that grow in the rainforest.
* Some trees stick out above the canopy, and each can stretch as wide as a football pitch.
* Scientists from the Museum explore the rainforest for undiscovered psecies. They think there are millions out there but 100 species of rainforest animals and plants are being wiped out every single week.
* Scientists studying the rainforest sometimes use hot air balloons to reach the very top of the canopy.

Tree Fall Story

Jungle trees run the most efficient recycling service on earth. With all these nutrients, tropical sunlight and water they've become the ultimate growing machines. And when a jungle giant dies it's big news. Suddenly, a massive hole is punctured in the canopy and all the plants on the forest floor get the chance they've been waiting for. In an area the size of a tennis court there may be as many as 60,000 seedlings waiting for their chance to stand in the light.

As soon as the first rays of light stream through, there is an explosion of plant life. Specialised sprinters begin to fill the gap. But this is no scramble it's an organised take-over. Although they are first on the scene, the sprinters time in the sun is short-lived. In just a few months bushes and shrubs take their place to dominate the clearing. Then pioneer trees get a growth spurt and within a few years overshadow them to bathe in the sunlight.

But the ultimate winner is a tiny mahogany sapling. It may be slower than the others, but these trees are in for the long haul. It can take a century of growth, but in time, the mahogany will overshadow all the other trees and the gap will finally be filled.

But light alone can't build a forest. 90% of the nutrients in a rainforest are trapped in the enormous canopy trees. It takes the death of a tree to bring these nutrients crashing into the underworld. When they arrive, a dedicated army of recyclers is poised ready to get at every morsel of goodness.

Secret hordes of micro-bugs, none larger than a grain of sand, staff the underworld. Helped by the tropical heat and humidity, they recycle the jungle's cast-offs into ever smaller pieces. At the end of the production line are the biggest rotters of all - the jungle's amazing array of fungi. Crucial members of the team, the fungi can break down materials that nothing else can cope with. But fungi are not just rotters, the entire jungle depends on them in another way.

Underground a tangle of tree roots spans out to gather nutrients for the enormous structures above. But they can't manage alone, so they link up with a network of special fungi called mycorrhizae. These soak up all the goodness in the soil and deliver it back through the roots to the trees.

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